


NaO/Cl

by nervecore



Category: NCT (Band), NCT 127 - Fandom, NCT Dream, NCT U - Fandom
Genre: Depression, Read at Your Own Risk, Up to your imagination, enjoy ig, it was insipired by 'chlorine' by twenty one pilots, not really mcd but yeah, tw // industrial drinks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-14
Updated: 2019-09-14
Packaged: 2020-10-18 07:17:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20635268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nervecore/pseuds/nervecore
Summary: ❝ Sometimes to feel alive, you need to kill some of yourself everyday. Even if that might mean you will feel dead inside in ways you can’t explain. ❞





	NaO/Cl

**Author's Note:**

> originally posted on tumblr on @neogotmymind (the blog might be deleted)

No one tells you when you are born that life is gonna be easy, but they neither tell you that it can be a hell of a ride. And clearly no one specifies one thing: some people will have it much easier than you, but they expect you to handle everything with a smile on your face, while they couldn’t care less, since not many bad things happen to them. But to satisfy the society, what are you gonna do? Break down in front of everyone? Of course not, you will find yourself hiding, feeling how your feelings you have inside are eating you up. You will end up in the bathroom, crying after you assured everyone you are fine. Find coping mechanisms that might be really useful, or might be the end of your life.

But usually at some point you don’t even care if you are alive or dead. Or maybe you do and you are just really scared of what life might present to you in the next moments…

"…and I can’t believe that Renjun almost wanted to hit me with a pan!“ complained Donghyuck, Mark finally snapping back of his trance and nodding, looking finally at the boy with sun kissed skin.

"Yeah, yeah… Renjun should calm himself a bit.” the boy agreed with his best friend, even if he didn’t pay attention at all to the story and why did Renjun want to hit Donghyuck with a pan.

"A bit?“ asked surprised Haechan. "A bit is too less, I feel like he might end my life before the next NCT Dream comeback.”

"You are just exaggerating, come on now.“ Mark told him and rolled his eyes, getting up and feeling a bit dizzy as he did, but ignored the feeling, since he was used to it by now. "I’m going to the studio, if Taeyong asks.” he then let Donghyuck know, even if the boy with sun kissed skin wanted to demand Mark to sit his ass back down, since he overworked himself these days more than usual. But Mark was already long gone outside the door.

He stretched a bit as he was walking down the stairs to exit the complex in which NCT’s dorms were situated. They just moved in new ones after the release of Regular Irregular album. They were bigger than the last ones and that meant more space, which of course it was required for so many people. 18 people and still counting. It was a mind blown even for him sometimes. And from all of them, he was the one getting the most hate, besides Taeyong of course, but he never told the older what he sees on the SNS. It would break everyone’s heart. Of course, Johnny, Jaehyun, Ten and Lucas were checking social media frequently too. But he was always faster. Deleting most of rude comments, flagging them and so on, so the others wouldn’t have to see them and get sad that even some of their fans are… the worst.

It has been a while since he was doing this and no one actually noticed. Thing that made Mark feel better, especially when his members were reading comments out loud and smiling, whenever someone was calling them cute, handsome or whatever. He always thought the fact that him being the only one getting broken little everytime when he saw the comments, was a little price for when he saw his members’ faces lit up at nice comments. It wasn’t that bad. This. Of only him suffering because of them. He wouldn’t say it was terrible or too much of pressure.

But of course, he was lying to himself. Major changes in his way of thinking, acting, dealing with situations and taking care of himself happened and were so obvious. He was overworking himself so much to the point of fainting, but never telling the others. Getting less and less sleep. Not eating enough. Not drinking water enough. Being paler than usual. Wearing hoodies even in the summer, becuaes he felt so cold without an explanation and mabe wanting to hide different traces of bad coping mechanisms.

People were noticing these, but no one was saying anything about this. And if they were even trying to do so, Mark would shrug them off immediately, telling them he was completly fine and they are worrying too much. No one was worrying too much. Another bad coping mechanism. He thought he was at his best when in reality, he was surpressing breakdowns and getting rid of them in unhealthy ways, without knowing he does so. And that was just more worrisome. Even the members were so concerned about their friend, but they didn’t know what to do. They encountered the CEO and tried to make him be aware of Mark’s state. It didn’t worked and starting to check everyday on the black haired boy would possibly make it worse actually, they were so confused in what to do to deal with this situation.

The boy walked into the building, pulling the hood of his hoodie on his head, trying to walk unnoticed by the other artists in the company. He was sick of being asked how he is doing, since he ran his mouth too much about how he is fine. After a bit of walking and taking the stairs and a tingling feeling as he was about to faint, he finally reached the studio and walked in the rap practice room, locking the room after him and sitting at the desk, pulling his sleeves even more, holding the pen and staring blankly at the papers in front of him, his mind flooded by thoughts.

As he was still with his head between clouds, he started writing on the papers, emotions streaming instead of blood and making his lyrics to have a strong connection to how he was feeling for a while, but at the same time tears were streaming down his face, a moment of realisation hitting him from every side, the drops wetting the papers. He broke the pencil and then threw it, hidding his face with his hands, crying even harder in that very moment. Everything was coming to him as he was hit by a truck. He wasn’t fine and he wasn’t fine in a while. It was just a fake mask he got tired of wearing every damn day. He was disgusted by himself and what he did to his body and yourself. He destroyed himself because of people he never met in real life. But which words open wounds that every trainee has, even not many talk about them. Few recover from them and more fall into a pit of despair.

Mark was categorized at first as the ones which recover, but slowly and surely he fell as well into the void he lived all his trainee days. And he didn’t know what to do anymore. Seems like he tried every way to get rid of this strange, thick tingling feeling. But it seemed like he was bound to it forever. He needed something to feel alive, to get out of this and feel better. He needed something to kill whatever was following him for a while already.

He got up from his seat and unlocked the rap practice room, going to the nearest bathroom, with his hoodie still on and looking down so no one would question him about his wet face. He washed his hands first and then his face, looking in the mirror, realising how heartbreaking he looked, but ignored it, biting his bottom lip and tasting something weird… The soap taste. He made a face, ready to spalsh some water again on his face, as an idea popped up in his mind. He looked through the bathroom for the stack of soap the building was using and looked on the back of a bottle, frowning as he read whatever was on it, still nibbling on his bottom lip, getting used to the taste of soap.

He shrugged and then walked out of the bathroom, not even realising it was 11 pm sharp. When did 3 hours pass so fast? He couldn’t understand, but what he knew was that when he arrived back, everyone was already sleeping, since most of them were really tired from schedules and so on. He tried to make little to no noise as he was sneaking to his own room, but the idea he had back at the company vibrated again in his mind and the urge was so big and the temptation so hard to ignore. He locked his bedroom’s door and let himself slide against the door, thinking twice if it was worth the feeling on feeling literally dead inside and the smile of a broken boy appeared on his face, signaling himself that if death was the one which made him think that, he was embracing it without further questions.

As the sun was getting high above the world, Mark felt light of it warming his always cold skin, making him to open one eye and look around. He was feeling so sick, his throat was still hurting from last night and his stomach was still not in the best condition, meaning he won’t have to eat today, which sadly was making him a bit happier. He was lucky enough he got to drink some sips of water so it didn’t become that bad… yet.

He got up from his bed, almost blacking out but he managed to stay on his feet and then he got another hoodie from his closet and some jeans, going to the bathroom and making sure he doesn’t look that dead, even he was aware of the fact he actually did. He observed no one else is up yet so he decided to check a clock, seeing it’s 7:30 am. He stopped in his tracks. All of them should have wake up at 6 and go to their usual early picninc which they had once per month. He looked around, seeing a note from Johnny saying he let him rest at home and they wll be back by 1 pm or so. He sighed and one thing he knew was that they made a mistake leaving him all alone at the dorm.

One bottle of soap away, the black haired boy was lying in his bed, feeling completly ill, but alive. The voice in the back of his head was telling him how lucky he is that the liquid has such low percentage of chlorine, either way he could have died until now. Not that it meant something for him anyway. He was holding his stomach, coughing his sore and burning throat, until it would eventually fall off. He threw up all the water with which he tried to diluate the soap, but also major parts of what he drank from the bottle and after that he drank some milk, which happily for his body, he didn’t vomit as well.

He read the effects of drinking something chlorine related or something sodium hypochlorite related. He didn’t spit blood until now or haven’t had his insides poisoned so bad that he would have his skin burned. Which was for the good, because if he forgot to hide the evidences well, his members would make him to never hear the end of it and he realises why, because what he was doing was dumb, no wonder. But he didn’t care. He had to kill his insides in order to feel alive on the outside and that’s straight up horrible for someone to go this far. The taste was awful, he was feeling like he was on his death bed, which he kinda was, but he had to feel something other than things he already got used to.

Feeling dizzy from major periods of not eating? Already a routine for him. Stomachache from not drinking water? Ignored by now. Being cold? Considered normal. Feeling sick everyday he sees himself in that damned mirror? Not hurting him anymore. Being aware of the deep wounds on different parts of his body? Not caring anymore if they heal or not. All his body was damaged so bad on the outside and a little on the inside too. But he decided to destroy it all on the inside too. Words hurt and they hurt so bad when you are on the fine line between life and death, doing things which kill you, just to know you are still alive. Would peopel ever realise how easy is it for someone to end up with so many scars?

The boy heard the door and he got up so fast he actually fell on the floor at first, the room spinning with him but he got all his strength and got up again, hiding everything which could be related to his new addiction related to a terrible choice and then he panicked and laid back in bed, getting the blanket over him, pretending to be asleep still when someone, most probably Donghyuck, opened the door to check on him.

"At least he’s getting some rest.“ he heard the younger say and he felt guilty. He didn’t get a good sleep in ages and he doesn’t think he would ever experience it again unless he gets into a coma.

This started a cycle without end in the past few weeks, as the percentage or sodium hypochlorite or just chlorine was raising with every soap, liquids or even bleach bottle. His body was exhausted from getting wrecked so much just to get a bit of relief with the water he drank after or milk. But if he would keep going for some much time, he would definitely end up in the hospital or even more, straight up in a grave. He knew what he was doing and it affected him a lot. People started noticing his stamina was even worse now, he was getting moves for the choreographies harder. His sides would hurt while practicing and he always felt like vomiting which some times he did.

But one day the blood also came into the discussion. He was a bit terrified, to say at least. It was the point where his body started its way to show Mark that it was finally going to die if he kept doing this bullshit. He had to get to a hospital soon, or it would get nasty. And by nasty, I mean heartbreaking. But how woudl you tell someone you were drinking things which had chlorine in them to get rid of yourself from this planet without making someone mad worried?

And the next day he had the answer: passing out after throwing up several times in 16 hours and ending up in a hospital in the worst condition ever. His members were totally unable to speak. They felt so guilty for not insisting more in making him tell them he is not okay. If they would have tried harder, it wouldn’t be the third day of Mark not waking up in a row. It would come the fourth, fifth, sixth. The company had no idea what to do, what to say to the media. Everything broke down. They were feeling the same strange, thick tingling feeling the black haired boy felt for some time already. They wanted him back. To tell him it’s gonna be alright, that they love him and they are there for him. That they want to help him and hug him.

And never go through maybe losing him again. But did Mark ever wake up again?


End file.
